This started when I saw a pattern in a magazine for a bold black and white quilt, with a spalsh of bright colour. After a lot of fabric browsing, I decided I liked the design, but I didn’t want to do it in plain colours. Then I found some William Morris prints that I liked. Half way through the project, I decided that:
- the result was a bit bland, and
- the blocks fell into clear groups, not all of which went together.
So I decided to split them into two groups, and make a smaller quilt with one group of blocks on each side.
So I’d got some fabric left over.
So I started to think about a scrappy sampler. I’ve got some other William Morris scraps that I’ve been hoarding for years, so it made sense. First of all, I made a series of blocks with a plain calico background, making sure the edges of the block were jagged, instead of having a solid band of colour round the edge.
Then I saw something online about Dresden butterflies. Now I’ve always liked the Dresden plate block, but the one I did for my sampler quilt 25 years ago put me off. Far too much faffing.
However, things have changed. Now you can cut the shape from strips with a rotary cutter, fold them in half and sew across the wide end, and you have a series of “self finished” segments for the block in no time at all.
My butterfly bodies took a bit of thought. There are various approaches online, but I wanted to keep it simple. I needed some slightly wider ones, to cover the raw edges that had ended up a little too far apart, because I didn’t measure before I sewed the wings onto the base fabric. And I liked the brown print for the bodies, but I didn’t have very much left.
But I managed to get a body for every butterfly.
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